Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

Hancock had been a famous Northumberland naturalist and the large, wellstocked,
natural history museum in Newcastle was named after him. I spent much
time there too, studying the specimens and making drawings and paintings of the
stuffed birds. I developed a style influenced I suppose by Talbot Kelly, but different.
I still have most of these, although I gave a number away. I also came into contact
with Bewick’s wood engravings, which influenced my later pen and ink drawings. I
came to know Grace Watt, later the Curator, because she was also an acquaintance of
my mother. A few years on, when I was working on Antarctic seals, she had become
an expert on the grey seals of the Farne Islands and we exchanged letters and
publications. Indeed I think there was probably much closer contact by students in
those days with teachers and researchers in Cambridge and elsewhere than now.
I had a State Scholarship, a County Major Scholarship and an Open Scholarship
at St Catharine's, but was only allowed to receive cumulative grants from these up to
a ceiling of about £200 or so, which was quite low even for those days. (This was
equivalent to some £5,000 -6,000 fifty years later, based on the Retail Price Index). My
parents were not well off and so I had to be careful about money. I earned some
money during most vacations, which helped, but the system also expected us to
spend a significant amount of time studying during the vacations.
My most enjoyable, successful (and lucrative), vacation job was one Christmas
vacation when I lived with Professor P D F Murray and his wife Barbara in their
house on Storey’s Way, Cambridge, drawing many of the illustrations for his
textbook ‘Biology’. He was a charming and very likeable Australian, a Professor of
Biology at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, then established in
Cambridge. He would tell me what he wanted me to illustrate and provide
materials - a skeleton, a bone, a dissection of a rabbit or a dogfish, an earthworm or a
frog, flowers, fruits or whatever, from which I made pen and ink drawings. He was
pleased with the result and I made about £100 (now in the l990's equivalent to nearly
£3,000) – not bad for the work of a month or so. This book did quite well, going into
several reprintings, and I later regretted not having asked for royalties rather than a
lump sum! However, it also gave me experience relevant to my courses. Later David
Lack FRS, Director of the Edward Grey Institute of Ornithology, Oxford, whom I had
met at an ornithological conference at Wadham College in l947, invited me to
illustrate a children's book he was writing. I agreed to take it on and a made a start,
but he was very difficult to please and, to my shame, I wasn’t able to finish it before I
departed for the Antarctic.
Part II Zoology
In my third year then, I took Part II Zoology. It was very different from Part I, if
only because the class numbered only 24 and we got to know each other very well.
This class, which took finals in l947 came to be known as the ‘golden year’ and peer
pressure competition may have been an important element, at least as far as I was
concerned. Much of one’s learning comes from contact and discussion with fellow
students. Of the 24, a third obtained First Class Honours in the exams; in those days,
unlike now, the proportion of firsts averaged about 10%, so it was an exceptional
group. I can remember most of my classmates: among them were Janet Singer, Jane
Ramsay, [Jane Bidder ?], Murdo Mitchison, Ray Beverton, John Carthy, John
Cloudesley-Thompson, Alan Crompton, Alan Charig, Arthur Mansfield, Norman
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